Month: September 2008

Many parents say that the methods used today for adding are not the same as when they were at school. Often this is not strictly true: the final standard written method is the same, but the steps used to reach this standard method have changed. The worksheet attached explains this in more detail.

The method of addition encourages understanding of the process of adding two, 2-digit numbers. It is known as ‘adding the least significant digit first’.

The method is to add the units first, then add the tens, finally adding the two together. It is a ‘half-way house’towards the standard written method, explaining what happens when the tens boundary is crossed during adding the units (ie when the units add up to more than 10). At this stage ‘carrying’ does not need to take place.

A pinboard and some elastic bands are a great resource for young children to use when exploring the properties of shapes.

A reminder that this can be made by nailing panel pins or small nails into a piece of plywood approximately 24cm × 24cm.

Cut out the plywood and mark a grid of lines at 2cm intervals in both directions across the plywood. Tap in the pins at the points where the lines of the grid meet. Leave enough of the pins protruding to accommodate elastic bands.

5 sided shapes are not that easy to draw or make as they can not be made using just right angles. This is a good exploration of the different types of shape that can be made and whether shapes are the same or not if they are rotated.

We are lucky enough to have limited access to some of the URBrainy worksheets for early years. These really are presented very well and are a great set of resources for children just starting off with maths. Here is a simple counting worksheet.

There is an excellent list of the vocabulary children need to understand and use in the reception worksheet section. The following list has the new words that they should come across in school during year 1 to do with calculating and solving problems. (According to the Primary Framework for maths and Numeracy Strategy.)
Words to do with calculating and solving problems:
plus near double
how much more is…? how much less is…?
subtract minus
half halve
equals sign
number sentence
operation

The attached pdf has all these words written twice: once so that they can be traced over and larger so that they can be cut out or used as ‘flash cards’ etc.

Tiffin Boys’ School, a well respected private school, has cut the amount of homework given to pupils. The students used to do anything up to 4 hours a night, but the head teacher, Sean Heslop, says that this is too much and the quality of the homework set was poor; often ‘repetitive’ or ‘mechanistic’. He has cut the amount to 40 minutes a night, following the lead of some other well known public schools.

Homework is not complusory, but the government likes it and recommends that all children of primary school age should be doing at least 30 minutes a night, rising totwo and a half hours for older children. many teachers hate it, seeing it as a pointless ritual of giving and marking mundane tasks just because they have to.

I agree with the head of Tiffin when he says,

” If there’s one way to put students off learning, that’s the way to do it.”

Homework has always been a difficult issue for many parents, far better if they spend some quality time with their children pursuing other interests.

We have extensively covered the maths vocabulary that children in reception are expected to come across. The following lists are the new words that they should come across in school during year 1 to do with numbers and the number system.
If a child does not respond to a mathematical question it may be because they do not understand the words or instructions used. Another difficulty can arise when a mathematical term has a different meaning in everyday English eg ‘table’.
Words to do with number:
Units
ones tens exchange digit teens number
equal to roughly half-way between
eleventh twelfth thirteenth fourteenth
fifteenth sixteenth seventeenth
eighteenth nineteenth twentieth
(all these are frequently used when stating the date; eg it is the thirteenth of February.)
The attached pdf has all these words written twice: once so that they can be traced over and again larger so that they can be cut out or used as ‘flash cards’ etc.

It seems that our schools are not teaching maths as well as they should. Ofsted reports that although test results have improved, understanding of the subject had not. Put simply, teachers are teaching for the tests.

Not a surprise really, when schools are judged on their test results. But now comes the weird bit; when you look at the figures:

“The effectiveness of work in maths was judged to be outstanding in 11%, good in 44% and satisfactory in 40%”

To me and you that adds up to 95% of lessons being satisfactory or better. But, of course Ofsted don’t count ‘Satisfactory’ as being good enough.

Chief inspector Christine Gilbert said: “The way mathematics is taught can make a huge difference to the level of enthusiasm and interest for the subject.

“As well as developing fluent numeracy skills to deal with everyday mathematics, children and young people need to be able to think mathematically, model, analyse and reason.”

She added: “We all benefit from the advanced mathematics that underpins our technological world”

Here are another two worksheets for early subtracting. They concentrate on subtracting a single digit from 10 and use the conventional signs for subtract and equals. At first children will probably ‘add on’ from the lower number to 10. Eventually it will be important that children know all the pairs of numbers that add up to 10 so that they can answer these immediately without going through the ‘add on’process.